America is a strange country in many ways. I guess all countries are weird to a certain extent, but America seems to have a passion for it. For instance, squirty cheese, inserting unnecessary Zs into words and daft gun laws.

Amongst the weirdness of America is their love of mascots. They aren’t the only country to love mascots, Japan springs to mind, but America really has gone to town with its mascotry. Every football team, college and business seems to have one. It’s almost mandatory.

Despite decades of practice, the Americans are still pretty darned awful at inventing mascots. Perhaps it’s because there are so many already in existence, so it’s difficult to invent new ones, or maybe they’ve just given up trying.

But, to give them their dues, I’ve had a great time looking through these college mascot abominations:

1) Artie the Fighting Artichoke

Mascot of Scottsdale Community College since the early 1970s, Artie looks like a bad joke. The best thing is, he actually was meant to be a bad joke. Students in the early 70s were annoyed that too much money was being splurged on the sports team. So, when they were asked to democratically vote on the team’s name they chose “The Fighting Artichokes” and voted that the team should wear pink and white.

The college university decided to ignore the vote and chose a boring name. The students went mental. A second vote was taken, the Artichoke was once again victorious, and this time it stuck. Nowadays, everyone loves the artichoke, and it’s easy to see why.

2) The Battling Bishop

Mascot of Ohio Wesleyan. Nice.

3) The Blue Blob

The Blob is the mascot of Xavier University, well, he’s one of two. The other is a relatively sensible musketeer. The Blue Blob was invented because the mustachioed, sword-wielding musketeer was scaring the kids. So they brought in a massive furry blue blob instead.

The Blue Blob has become pretty famous in his own right and even made an appearance in Playboy magazine.

4) Boilermaker Special

Sorry, what? A train? No, sorry Purdue University, you’ve done it wrong. Apparently in the 1890s Purdue was at the forefront of railway technology. Personally, I think they need to move on.

5) Brewer

Now that’s better. It makes a lot more sense for a beer keg to be a mascot than a friggin’ train. Well done Vassar College. Matthew Vassar set up the college, and he was a brewer, so there you go.

6) Boll Weevil

The mascot of the University of Arkansas is a massive green weevil called Monticello. Good, right?

7) Brutus Buckeye

You have The Ohio State University to thank for this monstrosity. The head is supposed to resemble the Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra), a type of horse chestnut. The Ohio buckeye is the official state tree of Ohio… Yeah, I didn’t know states had official trees either. FYI Arkansas’ state tree is the loblolly pine, and Missouri has the flowering dogwood. I thought you should know.

8) Cayenne

University of Louisiana. This is a chilli pepper if you were trying to work it out.

9) Chief Illiniwek

Chief Illiniwek was the official mascot of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until he was retired in 2007 for being… well… racist, basically.

10) The Colonel

No prizes for guessing which state this guy comes from: Eastern Kentucky University.

11) DIBS (Demon In A Blue Suit)

This guy’s from DePaul University. Ahhhh… there’s nothing like a demonic figure to bring folks together over sports, is there?

12) Morty The Eutectic

St. Louis College of Pharmacy. Eutectic?:

“…relating to or denoting a mixture of substances (in fixed proportions) that melts and freezes at a single temperature that is lower than the melting points of the separate constituents or of any other mixture of them.”

That’ll do for now. Stay tuned, I might do a PART 2 one of these days. I enjoyed that.